New Delhi: Amid the threat of the fourth wave of Covid-19, West Bengal on Saturday reported 55 new coronavirus infection cases. This number raised the tally in the state to 20,18,260, a bulletin issued by the health department said.


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The death toll remained unchanged with no fresh fatality due to the disease reported from any part of the state, the bulletin stated.


As many as 24 recuperated from the infection since Friday, pushing the total recoveries in the state to 19,96,693.


As per the revised data, the number of active cases rose to 366 in the last 24 hours, which is up from 335 the day before, according to the department.


As many as 25,055,522 samples have been examined in the state thus far, including 13,697 since Friday.


Meanwhile, a health official on Friday said that the Covid-19 situation in Bengal was normal with a very small number of people testing positive daily.


"The situation in the state is absolutely fine at the moment. There has been almost no death in the last few weeks. Also, the number of new cases is very paltry," he said.


"But, we will still suggest people maintain the safety protocols since there are regions in the country where we are noticing a slight rise in the number of cases. We have to keep ourselves protected," he added.


New Omicron variant found in India


The health department of Bihar on Thursday detected a new variant of Omicron in the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS).


The new variant BA.12 is 10 times more dangerous than BA.2 which was detected during the third wave of Corona in the country.


Prof Dr Namrata Kumari, the HOD of the microbiology department of IGIMS, said: "Keeping in view the rising Covid cases, we had started genome sequencing of samples of Omicron variant of Corona. There were 13 samples tested and one of them had BA.12 strains. The remaining 12 samples have BA.2 strains."


The BA.12 variant was first detected in the US.


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